Communication systems, such as trunked communication systems and conventional communication systems, are known to comprise a plurality of communication units, a limited number of communication resources that are transceived by a predetermined number of repeaters and a communication resource allocator. 0f the communication resources, one is selected as a control channel to transceive system data between the communication units and the communication resource controller, where the communication resources may be frequency carriers, pairs of frequency carriers, time division multiplexing (TDM) slots, or any other radio frequency (RF) transmission medium. The communication units may be vehicle, portable, cellular radios and/or telephones and may be arranged into communication groups.
Typically, in order for a non-registered communication unit to access a communication system, it must first be registered with the system. A non-registered communication unit is one that has not been acknowledged by the system manager. For example, a non-registered communication unit may be one that is new, such that it has never registered to any system or it may have just subscribed to a new service that now allows the unit to access the system. In either case, the system manager was not aware of the communication unit and it is therefore regarded as non-registered.
Typically, in prior art systems, the system manager registers the non-registered communication unit within a communication system database which may be located in the communication resource allocator. Registration of a communication unit comprises assigning an entry in the communication system database, wherein, the entry contains identification information of the unit and indicates the system features that the user has subscribed to and is entitled to access (i.e. registration information). These features may include private calling, group calling, roaming, telephone access, paging, emergency, etc.
Although such prior art systems are suitable for communication units once they are registered, it does not provide system access for non-registered communication units that should be registered but for whatever reason are not. Typically, to accommodate such a non-registered communication unit, the system manager must manually assign an entry to the unit in the system database. Furthermore, in the event of database loss, new system start up, or the addition of new communication units, the system manager must manually enter the communication unit's registration information into the database before system access can be granted. The manual entry of user registration information is both time consuming and cumbersome. Therefore, a need exists for a method that automatically permits limited system access to a non-registered communication unit until it can be registered.